Month: August 2018

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Trader Joe’s Opening September 14th

Rejoice! Trader Joe’s announced today that it is (finally) opening its first Memphis-area store at 2130 Exeter Road, Suite 101 in Germantown on Friday, September 14th.

From the release:

On Friday, September 14th at 8am, Trader Joe’s will officially open the door to its Germantown store—the very first Trader Joe’s location in the Memphis area. Moments before the store opens for business, a brief ceremonial lei cutting will take place, and the celebration is scheduled to continue throughout the morning with music, food tastings, giveaways, and more. Store Captain Noah Stevens, a 15-year veteran of the company, and Trader Joe’s Crew Members will be on hand to greet and assist customers. The new store—which will be the third Trader Joe’s location in Tennessee and is also accessible to customers in Arkansas and Mississippi—will feature murals that pay tribute to local landmarks such as Shelby Farms, the Orpheum Theater, and Wolf River. The store will be open from 8am-9pm, daily and will offer wine and beer in addition to groceries.

The company announced the Memphis store back in 2015, but the project has been met with a number of delays. 

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Ten Things About Ten Years Of Marvel Movies

The Paradiso is filling the traditional late summer movie doldrums with some repertory at the IMAX. For the last week it has been the spectacular presentation of 2001: A Space Odyssey providing an unparalleled cinema experience. This week, Marvel Studios is celebrating their 10th anniversary with an IMAX marathon. In the Marvel spirit of giving people what they want, here are 10 highlights from the 20 Marvel movies, arranged in the form of a numbered list to give it that little bit of extra narrative tension. Everybody loves lists, right? Let’s do this.

10. The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Marvel

Back in the lean comic years of the 1980s, a struggling Marvel sold the film right to some of its creations. Marvel’s A-list superheroes, The X-Men, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four wound up with Fox or with the Sony corporate hegemony, where films of varying quality were made in the early 2000s that whetted the appetite for comic book films. When producer Kevin Feige took over in 2007, just as the studio’s business model was changing from licensing its intellectual property to making their own films, Marvel was forced away from their flagship heroes to mine deeper into comic history. This proved incredibly freeing, and opened up new opportunities. Guardians of the Galaxy (Saturday 3:40 p.m.), for example, was one of the most fun blockbusters of the past decade, even though it comes from one of the more obscure corners of the Marvel comics library.

9. Marvel’s Biggest Failure

Of the 20 films Marvel screening this Labor Day weekend, exactly one, Ant-Man and The Wasp (Monday, 10 PM) has a titular female lead. And Evangeline Lilly as The Wasp gets second billing to the worst lead actor in the entire Marvel universe, Paul Rudd. Black Widow, portrayed iconically by Scarlett Johansson, is arguably the most interesting Avenger. If Marvel had wised up and given her a solo movie five years ago, they could have stolen DC’s Wonder Woman thunder, and we could have possibly avoided the Ghost In The Shell debacle.

8. The Most Comic-Book-y Comic Book Movie

I’m going to offer the hot take that Christopher Nolan has been bad for the superhero genre. He successfully brought gritty realism to comic book movies, but in the process he sacrificed the comic book form’s biggest strength: outlandish visuals. Marvel films, especially the later ones, have embraced the possibilities of CGI. None have veered farther from photorealism than 2016’s Doctor Strange. Director Scott Derrickson channels the Sorcerer Supreme’s creator Stephen Ditko with wave after wave of psychedelic freak outs — while also lifting some licks from Nolan’s Inception for good measure.

7. You Need A Good Villain

You know why Batman is everybody’s favorite superhero? Because he’s got the best villains. Superhero films live and die by the charisma of the bad guy, and the plausibility of their plan. The best recent example was Michael Keaton as Vulture in Spider-Man Homecoming (Sunday, 9:50 p.m.). The sotto voce threats he delivers to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man while Peter Parker is trying to bone his alter ego Adrian Tooms’ daughter Liz on homecoming night may be the single best acted scene in any Marvel movie.

6. The Guardians’ Secret Weapon

Who is the heart of the Guardians of the Galaxy sub-franchise? If you said ubiquitous hot guy Chris Pratt’s Star Lord, you’re mistaken. The correct answer is Karen Gillian as Nebula. Gillian has been low-key walking away with every movie and TV show she’s been in for the better part of a decade. She propped up Matt Smith’s mediocre Doctor Who for three years as Amy Pond, one of the best companions in the show’s 50-year history. Just last year she stole the Jumanji reboot out from under The Rock. Nebula, tortured and twisted and intensely physical, plays nemesis to her sister Gamora, and the scenes between Gillian and Zoe Saldana always crackle with emotion. When she reluctantly teams up with them, in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Sunday, 7 p.m.) her pouty sarcasm fits right in with the rest of the crew. In real life, Gillian just wrote and directed her first feature film, The Party’s Just Beginning.

5. The Third Act

The “Marvel Third Act” has become a shorthand for a big ending where our colorful heroes fight a horde of grey, identical monsters, with lots of attendant property damage, but no consequences for the heroes. It was perhaps best executed in 2012 by Joss Whedon in The Avengers (Friday, 3:40 p.m.), but its unimaginative imitators have been a plague on the multiplex ever since. Interestingly, Whedon commented on the Marvel Third Act in Avengers: Age Of Ultron (Saturday, 7 p.m.), when the destructive aftermath of the Battle of Sokovia would haunt the heroes.

4. Smaller Is Better

One of the problems with writing stories about superheroes is that they’re larger than life. That means the stakes must always be growing larger to give the overpowered protagonists a decent challenge. But after the fifth time you’ve seen someone save the world, you think maybe it isn’t that hard. The best Marvel stories turn out to the ones where the stakes are smaller, and the heroes alone. Ant-Man (Saturday, 9:55 p.m.) excels despite its flat lead because the conflict is almost beside the point. The real fun is the giddy special effects sequences that are like a jazzed-up version of The Incredible Shrinking Man.

3. The Evolving Hero

The creeping Batmanization of the world compels every lead character to be dark, tortured, and brooding. Only manly men who experience no pleasure in their lives can aspire to the title of hero. Marvel has resisted this, and their bread and butter has become redefining what a hero can be. In Captain America: Civil War (Saturday, 1 p.m.), Vision, played by Paul Bettany, wears a sensible sweater/oxford combo and cooks breakfast for his superpowered girlfriend Wanda Maximoff (Elisabeth Olsen). Then, in Avengers: Infinity War (Monday, 7 p.m.), he offers to sacrifice himself to save half the universe.

2. Killmonger Was Right

Why was Black Panther (Monday 3:40 p.m.) so good? The number one reason is that director Ryan Coogler did his homework and delivered a perfectly constructed action movie. Each scene builds on the last and leads to the next. And most importantly, both the hero Black Panther (the unbelievably charismatic Chadwick Boseman) and the villain Killmonger (the unbelievably charismatic Michael B. Jordan) have believable motivations and coherent cases to make for their sides. T’Challa is the king and defender of the status quo in Wakanda. They have been kept safe by their advanced technology for hundreds of years. But Killmonger rightly points out that while Wakanda has stayed safe, they have allowed the colonization and genocide of Africans outside their borders. Killmonger wants to use the power of Wakanda to rectify that situation and colonize the white world right back. Black Panther defeats Killmonger, but T’Challa is moved by his vision and opens Wakanda up to the world, hoping to make it a more just place. It’s a rare bit of moral complexity in a genre that is pretty much defined by its black and white ethical structure.

1. Captain America: The First Avenger

Coming in at number one on our countdown that is in no way an actual countdown is Captain America: The First Avenger (Friday 1 p.m.). Director Joe Johnson hits the superhero sweet spot with this Nazi-punching triumph. Johnson’s influence looms large over the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He is a special effects innovator whose debut film Honey I Shrunk The Kids, was basically a look book for Ant-Man. His 1990 film The Rocketeer, about a man who finds a super flight suit and battles Nazis in the 1930s, was a box office failure at the time, but provided a template for The First Avenger. Chris Evans, who had previously played The Human Torch in Sony’s failed Fantastic Four adaptation, gives a performance on par with Christopher Reeve’s Superman as the once-scrawny kid from Brooklyn who would become the moral center of the Avengers. The overriding theme of all of the Marvel movies is Stan Lee’s maxim “With great power comes great responsibility,” and no one sets a better example than Captain America. 

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Outgoing Mayor and Commission Engage in One Last Final-Day War of Nerves; Then a Veto

CREDIT: JB

UPDATED




It was Friday, August 31. A new Shelby County Mayor and County Commission had been sworn in, but all the talk was of a possible veto of two items by outgoing Mayor Mark Luttrell. Meanwhile, Commission chair Heidi Shafer stood ready to reconvene her body to override.

The genuine element of suspense was not to be alleviated until late in the day when Luttrell vetoed both items, leaving their final disposition up to new Mayor Lee Harris and a newly installed Commission, eight of whose members will be brand-new.

JB

Luttrell waits out the veto matter on his last day in office.

The two items in contention were measures passed last Monday at the outgoing Commission’s last formal meeting. One was the Commission’s approval of an amended resolution to support a subdivision development in southeast Shelby County, adjacent to Collierville. The other was a resolution rescinding a previous resolution of 2007, with the net effect of restoring assorted health and life insurance benefits to county employees (specifically including two-term Commissioners) of eight years service.

Mayor Luttrell, dressed casually and preparing to remove his effects to make way for his newly sworn-in successor, Lee Harris, acknowledged early Friday that he had decisions to make on a whole body of things processed at the last Commission meeting. “I’ll do my thing, and the Commission will do its,” he said, not tipping his hand as to his intentions.

Early in the day, Luttrell could not guarantee how early he would decide on the two contentious matters. It was clear that a veto of one or both of them late in the day would clearly complicate the issue of when and how the Commission could react. And, in the course of a desultory last day conversation in his office, he seemed to be implying that, in fact, he intended to wait until the last possible moment — 11:59 p.m., if necessary — to present the Commission with a fait accompli veto (or vetoes) that could not bne answered by the current Commission but would carry over for possible action by the members of the new Commission.

JB

Chairman Shafer as emcee of swearing-in ceremony

The subdivision proposal was one that was stoutly resisted by the City of Collierville and by various neighbors to the project, who maintained that the proposal of several hundred small-acre lots would be out of character with existing large-acre household tracts. On Friday, Luttrell said the development, if he let it stand, would occasion some significant additional service costs for the County, as well. “Roads, water, sewer connections, additional law enforcement demands, and more,” as he said.

The benefits resolution would apply to outgoing two-term members of the Commission, among some 2500 or so other county employees and was estimated to obligate the County for $6 to $10 million in additional funding, according to chief Luttrell aide Harvey Kennedy. “The issue is too important not to give it adequate actuarial study, and the next administration and Commission can do that,” Luttrell said.

Beyond the specific issues of the two controversial measures was the larger one of what has amounted to a bureaucratic Cold War that has been waged between the Luttrell administration and the Commission for the last two or three years. The two governmental spheres had over the years battled over an increasing number of issues related to spending and various matters of oversight and planning.

Commision chair Heidi Shafer had signaled that she was in touch with enough members of the expiring Commission to summon them for a last-minute override session — if successful, the 11th and 12th overrrude to a mayoral veto during Luttrell’s tenure. But Luttrell was in a position, by waiting until the very brink of midnight, to get the last lick in as a conclusion to what has been a two-year power struggle with the Commission, and that indeed seemed the likely way he would play things out.

The contentiousness between Mayor and Commission had continued even to the matter of Thursday’s swearing-in ceremony for Harris and the Commissioners, charter officials, and clerks who were elected in the August 2 election. Chairman Shafer said that, after learning that Luttrell had left planning for the event up to Harris, she took charge of arrangements for the Thursday ceremony.

Shafer noted that Mayor-elect Harris had of yet no wherewithal, budgetary or otherwise, to oversee such a ceremony. When asked about the matter of planning for the ceremony, Luttrell said he was merely following the precedent he himself experienced upon taking office eight years ago when, he said, then provisional Mayor Joe Ford told him it was his responsibility to organize a swearing-in event.

Luttrell said, however, that, contrary to informal reports, he had authorized funding for Thursday’s ceremony, from the County’s general fund.

JB

Harris, the new Mayor-to-be, meanwhile was unpacking on Friday.

Down the hall of the 11the floor of the County building, meanwhile, Mayor-elect Lee Harris was hard at work on Friday unpacking and organizing for his term in a transition space provided to him and a core group of staffers. He had only one comment about the ongoing last-day confrontation between his predecessor and the outgoing Commission. Harris said, apropos the likelihood that mayoral veto action might carry one or both of the two controversial resolutions over into his term, “I don’t want to spend $10 million that the County doesn’t have.”

And that, in tandem with a putative last-minute veto opprotunity open to Luttrell, seemed to foreshadow both the short- and long-term prospects for at least the benefits resolution and perhaps both of them — giving the Mayor the satisfaction of one last win on his way out the door.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Obsession: Circuit Playhouse Stages White Collar Crime Drama, Junk.

CREDIT: Playhouse on the Square

Playhouse on the Square

Gabe Beutel-Gunn

“It’s savage and it’s cruel
And it shines like destruction
Comes in like the flood
And it seems like religion
It’s noble and it’s brutal
It distorts and deranges
And it wrenches you up
And you’re left like a zombie
And I want you
And I want you
And I want you so
It’s an obsession” — The Eurythmics, 1982.

To build on an idea put forward by addict/philosopher William S. Burroughs, Junk needs swagger like a junkie needs junk. It also needs the raw, biological urgency of addiction. Though Ayad Akhtar’s script is a trope-eschewing, drug-free zone compared to most mythic tales of corporate greed in the 1980’s, Circuit Playhouse’s earnest production joneses hard for the wild eyes and religious fervor so vividly described in the play’s opening moments.

We’ve seen stories like Junk before. Salesmen, The Maysels Brothers 1969 documentary about door-to-door Bible peddlers was a study in the rich, racist language of predatory business in America. That inspired David Mamet’s prescient real estate drama, Glengarry Glen Ross. The Wolf of Wall Street was a blurry,  sweat and semen-drenched Polaroid of excess and, in a similar post-party vein, The Big Short was quirky, disruptive, and as entertaining as it was educational. On stage there’s been Enron and Serious Money and I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention  Gordon Gekko’s succinct “Greed is good,” monologue from 1987’s Wall Street, an original period artifact that’s still as quotable as it ever was. But Junk, the story of game-changing junk bond king Robert Merkin, has no use for quirk, color or succinctness. It’s all sprawling sincerity and shades of gray with one thing logically following another with all the intrigue and suspense of a single-file domino tumble. Junk‘s script leans on narration, biasing “tell” over “show,” and Circuit’s translation from page to stage does little to correct the imbalance.

Robert Merkin’s got problems with the American media. Newspapers only collect low hanging fruit he grouses in a familiar complaint about the modern press. He’s not all wrong, of course. Reporters do sometimes craft narratives with “good guys and bad guys,” as surely as if they were playwrights.

“[Reporters] don’t understand how the real world works,” Merkin says, laying out Junk‘s primary meta-text. Calling no attention to the irony, he heroically (and accurately) points out that his brave, new system puts money into the hands of poor people and minorities who’d been shut out of the American economy. Watching Merkin invent subprime loans in prison to “help” an underpaid guard realize the “dream” of home ownership, is a helpful reminder of how big time gangsters may have better reputations back in the old neighborhood. In doing so, it also reminds us why the professional classes don’t get “deplorable,” values.

Obsession: Circuit Playhouse Stages White Collar Crime Drama, Junk.

What all these narrative threads lack is the meaning and human context of a crashing economy and the historic loss of minority wealth that occurred when the bubble finally popped.

Akhtar’s balanced, complicated treatment tells the story of a hostile takeover. Merkin, by proxy, acquires the publicly-owned  Everson Steel, outfoxing the family-run corporation’s third-generation management at every turn. He’s going to kick the struggling steel business to the curb, killing jobs and the possibility of resurgence while focusing on pharma holdings in a weirdly boring game of economic chicken that makes it impossible for even the horn-doggiest of old-school capitalists to compete without getting themselves hooked on junk.

Junk strips away the usual trappings of business procedurals, exposing a kind of ritual addiction. Akhtar works a nonjudgmental idea that every person’s the hero of his or her own story. Every man, anyway. But so many characters never develop, many more important threads go un-pulled, while other shopworn tropes emerge.

To some degree guest director Warner Crocker ignores the playwright’s suggestion to avoid making Junk “an 80’s play,” and it wouldn’t shock me if all John Hughes’ movies got together and called Circuit Playhouse to ask for their soundtrack back. But, if one were to go that way, Junk‘s about boys club bullies, and in spite of its pivotal female roles, closer in spirit to Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” than “Summer of ’69.” Soaring, transcendent (and sometimes bewildering) moments would nestle brilliantly into something from Glassworks. Judy Chen’s sexless monologue about money giving her an orgasm might make more sense were she one of many stone-faced Robert Palmer girls, swinging to the shredding guitar samples of Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” or if all the filthy lucre flowing through Junk manifested itself in any way other than the decorative illuminated spikes on a graph-inspired set.

Speaking of, Phillip Hughen’s sweet scenic design is also a bit of a one trick pony. Oh hell yes, the light-bright graph is way cool to look at, but does it help tell the story? Or does it just limit stage depth and opportunities to design something bolder than this Junk‘s enter/exit blocking. The isolation works for one character and Jason Gerhard is typically excellent as a terrified, easily manipulated dumb-money investor.

Carla McDonald

Extra width, not much depth.

Circuit’s creative team has brought together a strong cast that should be capable of riskier, and more rewarding choices. As Merkin, Gabe Beutel-Gunn is all sincerity and righteousness, while Mark Pergolizzi’s Tresler, a traditional capitalist determined to preserve the status quo at (almost) any cost, mixes entitlement and easy self-assurance with rigidity and calculated bluster. Both men need to command a room like Tony Robbins power-walking into a self-improvement revival, thumping his latest book like the King James Bible. Neither do, and no other character is developed enough to make this play tick.

This should be a good role for Beutel-Gunn, and maybe even a better role for Pergolizzi who knows a little something about how to play rock star kings threatened by gypsy killers with no respect for established rules of the game. Why does it seem like every staging choice was designed to make both the high-rolling, p-grabbing Tresler and his natural enemy so much smaller than life?

Kevin Shaw crafts the evening’s most compelling character. He’s completely believable as Everson, the third generation scion of American steel royalty, coming awkwardly, and much too late to an understanding that sustainability means more than shuffling numbers on a balance sheet. It means expensive modernization. It means working with communities and labor and taking the kind of profit hits Wall Street won’t stand for. But he’s pure milquetoast, blinkered by privilege and unprepared to face the expensive-suited barbarians hammering away at his gate.  

Though the character is somewhat misused, Jeff Kirwan gets to the heart of things as a union boss scolding the rank and file for choosing self-interest over self preservation. Sadly, even in this very long play, there’s not enough time to show how the steel industry changed the face of labor with its “new experimental bargaining.” That broadly-adopted change in protocol took away the right to strike in favor of binding arbitration. Since you’re reading this review here and are unlikely to find anything similar on the The Commercial Appeal‘s website, it might be helpful to understand that these same bargaining techniques enabled union -busting and the corporate delocalization of daily newspapers. So Junk‘s most heartfelt moment leaves the false impression of short-sighted workers availing themselves of a money grab when, for the previous 20-years union leadership had been golfing with management, while ignoring comment from the rank and file that might have sustained America’s unionized industry through mechanization.  Like reporters, playwrights also tell easy, incomplete stories sometimes. At least Kirwan connects with both his character, and the audience during Junk‘s heart-breaking aside about complicity and the common man.

Obsession: Circuit Playhouse Stages White Collar Crime Drama, Junk. (2)

While I don’t really miss all the cocaine or the gratuitous sex that often accompanies these kinds of stories, I do miss the speed, clarity, chaos and manifest temptation. Junk‘s a fine essay, but a less than extraordinary play that creeps along with three dots left dangling for every two it connects. Even these weaknesses might be exploited by embracing another trope of the 1980’s — postmodernism. Expanding on the example of shows like Enron,  Junk might discover its better life as a rose-strewn toe-dance across the keys of  a big baby-grand, ascending like good hair or a big black and white stairway to heaven. The thing about this american ritual, to borrow from The Eurythmics, “It’s savage and it’s cruel and it shines like destruction, comes in like the flood and it seems like religion. It’s noble and it’s brutal. It distorts and deranges. It wrenches you up, and you’re left like a zombie.” Junk doesn’t do any of that.

That’s love, not judgment. 

Obsession: Circuit Playhouse Stages White Collar Crime Drama, Junk. (3)

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Life is Long. Life is Short.

CREDIT: Christopher Halloran | Dreamstime.com

As I write this, the news is full of stories about Donald Trump googling himself at 5:30 a.m., not liking the results, and subsequently tweeting that Google was biased because most of the news about himself was “bad.” That darn Google. So unfair.

I don’t even know where to begin in order to process that level of narcissistic ignorance.

The news is also full of stories about Senator John McCain, who died of brain cancer this week and was honored by friend and foe alike for his service to the country. Except for one foe, of course — President Trump — who had to have his arm twisted before lowering the flag over the White House and issuing a brief statement noting McCain’s service. Trump likes heroes who weren’t captured.

Christopher Halloran | Dreamstime.com

Senator John McCain

Meanwhile, the MAGA supporters and ‘bots were busy spreading scurrilous posts on social media about McCain being a traitorous “songbird” who “broke” while captured by the North Vietnamese and gave information that caused the deaths of American servicemen. These claims, which were initially created by political operatives during McCain’s presidential primary run against George W. Bush, have been thoroughly debunked. But that didn’t stop the lies from being spread by people who wouldn’t last two minutes under interrogation by my high school gym teacher.

I met McCain once, in the spring of 1986. I was flying to Phoenix, where I was going to spend three days hanging out with a young baseball player named Barry Bonds for a Pittsburgh magazine cover story. Sitting behind me were two men who spent the entire time we were airborne talking about politics. They were animated, and seemed to be in the know. As we prepared to deplane, one of the men stood up and began shaking hands with his fellow passengers. “Good to meet you, Congressman,” the passengers said. “Good luck, Congressman.”

It was McCain, then an Arizona representative, who was running for the Senate seat he would win and hold until his death, 32 years later. He reached out to shake my hand and I wished him luck, though I had no idea who he was at the time, and didn’t much care.

I had more interesting things to do, like spending the next few days hanging with the young man who would go on to post the greatest hitting stats of any modern baseball player. At that time, he was an eager kid, living in an apartment in Tempe with a kitten, thrilled to have been drafted by the Pirates, and excited to be the subject of a magazine story.

My main take-aways were Bonds’ love for the obscure movie, Enemy Mine, and his hours-long daily training regimen, which included the astounding practice of swinging at baseballs with a sledgehammer. Like I say, nice kid. We posed him with a sledgehammer on the cover.

After the story came out, I got a sweet note from Bonds’ mother. After that, her son proceeded to hit 762 home runs in 21 years, more than any man in history, before retiring in disgrace in 2007, tainted by the steroids scandal. His head got really big, in more ways than one.

So, is there a point here? I’m not sure, except that life is long and life is short and nobody’s perfect. And the way you feel about someone can change over time. I grew to dislike Bonds after subsequent encounters with him, though I always respected his talent — until it became obvious that he himself didn’t respect it enough to play by the rules.

I respected McCain, though I didn’t often agree with his politics. He reminded me of my father’s Republican party — conservative, cranky, and principled, for the most part — a necessary balance in a two-party system. I respected the fact that McCain saw through Trump’s blather, even if he didn’t always stand up against it as I wished he would.

But he’s gone now. The two men who defeated McCain in his attempts to win the presidency will speak at his funeral. And the president who didn’t think McCain was a hero will sit and fume — and google himself — as a good man’s body lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Many Happy Returns! Memphis Tiger Football Preview 2018

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Here come the expectations. After decades as a college football afterthought, the University of Memphis Tigers open their 2018 season as front-runners. The program may have lost an All-American receiver (Anthony Miller is now the property of the Chicago Bears) and a 4,000-yard passer (quarterback Riley Ferguson), but these are not your older brother’s Memphis Tigers. Having finished in the nation’s Top 25 twice since the 2014 season, the U of M aims for a second straight West Division title in the American Athletic Conference . . . and that’s for starters. A conference title and berth in a New Year’s Six bowl game are on the table for discussion.

Third-year coach Mike Norvell wouldn’t have it any other way.

“There are going to be a lot of eyes watching everything we do,” says Norvell, winner of 18 games since his arrival before the 2016 season. “The responsibility is that much greater. It’s a compliment to our program, and a compliment to our personnel. And it’s a great example for future Tigers. People recognize the progression that’s occurred here. But we haven’t done anything yet. We have to put in the work that’s necessary. You have to remember some games where we came up short, and the little details that will allow us to continue the push to be the best version of ourselves.”

Larry Kuzniewski

Tony Pollard

There are two glaring absences from the Tigers’ offensive depth chart as the season gets underway. Gone are Anthony Miller (only the fourth Tiger to earn first-team All-America recognition from the Associated Press) and Ferguson (the first Tiger to pass for more than 4,000 yards in a single season). Don’t expect any two individuals to approximate Miller’s and Ferguson’s production of a year ago. Instead, look for a distribution of responsibility among a few returning players, some of them with their own All-America aspirations. Starting with Tony Pollard.

The Memphis program recently went 19 seasons (1997-2015) without returning a single kickoff for a touchdown. Pollard — the pride of Melrose High School — returned two as a redshirt-freshman in 2016 (the first Tiger ever to score on a pair of kickoffs in a single season), then returned four last season, putting him on the cusp of breaking the national career record (seven, held by three players) and with two seasons yet to play. Pollard averaged an astounding 40.0 yards on his 22 kickoff returns and accumulated 1,647 all-purpose yards (rushing, receiving, and kick returns) on his way to a second AAC Special Teams Player of the Year award.

“Tony has made a dynamic impact on our return game,” says Norvell. “His role in the offense expanded last year, and it’s been great to see his fundamental development. He’s such a versatile player. And he’s become a master at technique.”

Pollard preparing to return a kickoff will be a considerable silver lining after a Tiger opponent scores this fall. And having already returned three kickoffs 100 yards, Pollard considers every kickoff a few quick strides from six points.

“Once I see I’m going to catch [a kickoff], I automatically think it’s going to the house,” says Pollard. “That’s how our kickoff unit thinks. It’s having faith in everyone up front, that they’ll hold their blocks long enough for you to get through. And they have trust in me to hit the hole [they create], and not just bounce outside every time. There’s a lot to it — a lot of coaching — behind the scenes.”

Erik Williams

Sophomore T.J. Carter

Pollard would like to surpass 2,000 all-purpose yards this fall and sees no reason the new fair-catch rule for kickoffs will slow him down. “There may be more pooch kicks this year,” says Pollard, “but our coach is a genius, so he’ll find some way around it.”

“It’s hard to take momentum away from another team,” says senior center Drew Kyser. “And that’s what Tony does; he changes the game.”

Perhaps the only teammate who might challenge Pollard in a footrace is junior tailback Darrell Henderson. The native of Batesville, Mississippi, averaged a staggering 8.9 yards per carry last season on his way to 1,154 yards rushing and 11 touchdowns (two through the air). He’s a preseason all-conference selection and will play a critical role in support of a rookie quarterback. Junior Patrick Taylor (866 yards rushing and 14 touchdowns in 2017) will get his share of carries as well.

About that rookie quarterback. The Tigers opened preseason camp with an open competition between graduate-transfer Brady White and sophomore David Moore (Ferguson’s backup a year ago). But on August 21st, Moore announced he intends to transfer, essentially handing the gig to White.

Originally recruited by Norvell to play at Arizona State (where Norvell was then an assistant coach), White hasn’t thrown a pass since suffering a foot injury three games into his 2016 season with the Sun Devils. He’s a pro-style passer, once ranked 54th in the country as a high school senior by Rivals.com. With Moore removed from the depth chart, freshmen Brady McBride and Connor Adair will vie for backup duties.

Larry Kuzniewski

Henderson

In Miller’s absence, White’s primary targets will be sophomore Damonte Coxie (21 catches and a 15.4-yard average last season) and a pair of tight ends with all-conference hopes: juniors Joey Magnifico and Sean Dykes. The two combined for 36 catches and six touchdowns last season.

The Tiger offense will have the luxury of a veteran line, one that features three of the team’s eight seniors: Kyser (38 career starts), Trevon Tate (34 starts), and Roger Joseph. While only a junior, Dustin Woodard has 24 starts under his belt and will help in blasting holes for Tiger ball-carriers. “You have to have five guys who play as one unit,” stresses Norvell. “I like the leadership we have; it can be a strength. If they play to the level they’re capable of, it will make everyone around them better.”

The Tigers allowed 21 sacks in 2017, a low number — good for 37th in the country — but a figure that could be lowered this fall with a larger emphasis on the running game. (Memphis threw the ball 488 times last season and ran the ball on 453 plays.)

Kyser cuts to the chase when asked about his team’s status as favorites. He’s enjoyed 27 wins in three years and sees no reason the program’s run might be slowed. “Our goal is to be undefeated at the end of the year and national champions,” he says. “[Our opponents] know we’re coming. We’re gonna keep fighting till the end.” Kyser intends to be a more vocal leader, every offensive play starting with the ball in his hands. “I wanted to be a quarterback, but God blessed me with 300 pounds. I take pride in being the quarterback of the offensive line. The coaches trust me to make calls at the line of scrimmage.”

The Tigers averaged 45.5 points per game last year, second in the country only to AAC champ UCF. (Memphis hosts the Knights on October 13th.) But the Tiger defense allowed 32.5 points per game, 102nd among 130 FBS teams. Presuming a drop, at least slightly, from last year’s offensive production, the Tigers will need to shave a few points off their average allowed to harbor thoughts of another 10-win season.

Larry Kuzniewski

Coach Mike Norvell

“Last year was tough [on our defense],” says Norvell. “We had six starters who went down. We had to force some young guys into action, maybe before they were truly ready. We knew we had a top-notch offense, and we needed to get them the ball.” The 2017 Tigers finished third in the country in turnover margin, gaining 31 (via interception or fumble recovery) while losing only 16.

The 2018 defense could be led from the secondary, as sophomore cornerback T.J. Carter played a pivotal role a year ago with five interceptions on his way to Freshman All-America recognition and the AAC’s Rookie of the Year award. “I’m ready to become a leader,” says Carter. “I’ve seen what it takes to get to the [AAC] championship game, and it’s not easy. I wasn’t as vocal last year, but I’m learning the whole defense. With a year of experience, even in the spring, I’m more comfortable with the play calls. You don’t have to think as much, especially on the back end.” Carter touts the growth of a classmate, La’Andre Thomas, and says Thomas could be a new force in the Tiger secondary, likely from the safety position.

Senior linebacker Curtis Akins led the 2017 Tigers with 88 tackles (60 of them solo) and rejects the idea that Genard Avery’s departure (he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns) will leave a void. “If they don’t score, they can’t win,” says Akins, a mantra he intends to impart to his teammates all season. “Since I got here, the offense has carried us. This is my last year; I want the defense to lead the pack. I made the checks and calls last year, so I’m comfortable in the role.”

Akins credits strength coach Josh Storms with helping him add 20 pounds over the off-season and claims he’s actually faster than before he added the muscle. With sophomore Tim Hart and junior Austin Hall back, and with the emergence of sophomore J.J. Russell, look for the Memphis linebackers to decide a game or two.

Norvell signed a five-year contract extension last December that will pay him $13 million through the 2022 season. (Resolution: Let’s wait until at least bowl season to start the hand-wringing over whether a Power Five program will convince Norvell to shred that contract.) Still a few weeks shy of his 37th birthday, the coach is genuinely excited about prospects for the season, and embraces the unknown.

“There are question marks,” he acknowledges. “Who’s going to be the go-to when times are tough? Who will step up and perform at an elite level? I love competition. There are guys who started for our football team last year who are going to have a tough time keeping their position moving forward. Because we’ve recruited at a high level. And players have worked relentlessly to put themselves in a good position.

“We’re a bigger football team,” emphasizes Norvell. “We’re a faster football team. The weight-room numbers, the strength and development have been incredible. Our staff has come together: new faces, new ideas, new energy. Everybody associated with our program is fired up. We know there’s a lot of work in front of us. Challenges will arise. But I know this team is ready.”

“As a program,” adds Pollard, “we have to stay focused on our task, not look too far down the line.” Preseason rankings — and preseason All-Americans — are long forgotten come December.

After four straight winning seasons and a pair of Top 25 finishes, can Memphis be classified as a football school? A football town? Mike Norvell’s a believer: “When you walk down the street and you see people wearing that Memphis logo, yelling ‘Go Tigers!’ . . . We know the importance. It puts us on a national scale. We represent the entire community in how we play. When people ask me to describe Memphis, I say it’s culture and community. Starting in the spring, we have a festival every weekend. What’s exciting for me is that we now get to have seven festivals [at the Liberty Bowl] in the fall. I take pride in that.”

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Love Never Dies at the Orpheum

With all of its circuses, sideshows, freak shows, geek shows, and pickled punk wagons, Coney Island during the early 20th century would make an intriguing setting for any faintly gothic romance laced with tragedy. It’s really the only place where a sequel to Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s enormously popular and spectacle-laden musical The Phantom of the Opera makes sense. Although critics panned the original West End production, which closed before transferring to Broadway, a retooled version of Love Never Dies found its audience and is now touring the states.

“When Andrew Lloyd Webber came to Detroit for the launch of show, I got a feeling this was a show he was very proud of,” says Karen Mason, who plays the pivotal role of Madame Giry.

Love Never Dies

“It’s interesting in this age of ‘#MeToo,’ that the show really does resonate with some people,” she says, describing the Phantom’s obsessive relationship with Christine as “a different kind of love story.”

Mason’s character Giry rescues the notorious and volatile Phantom from life as a circus freak then helps him escape at the end of Webber’s original musical. In Love Never Dies she enables him to set up his own show in a place where misfits fit right in.

Citing Gypsy‘s Mama Rose as a favorite role, Mason says she’s attracted to characters who are willing to do whatever it takes to get the things they want. In a similar, if more delusional vein, Mason was a standby for Glenn Close in her signature role as Norma Desmond in ALW’s Sunset Boulevard.

“But who’s to say every time you go toward a goal it’s not some form of delusion?” she says. That’s so Phantom.

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Music Music Features

“Memphis Legends” Brings City’s Top Rappers Together

Barring a natural disaster, music promoter Peppa Williams will pull off the impossible this weekend. “I plan on making history; this has never been done before,” says Williams of his Memphis Legends concert. Starring rap pioneers Tommy Wright III, Kingpin Skinny Pimp, Gangsta Blac, Gangsta Boo, Playa Fly, La Chat, Al Kapone, DJ Squeeky, Gangsta Pat, DJ Zirk, and more, the event is slated for East Memphis’ Blue Moon Event Center Sunday night, September 2nd.

It’s the first time in decades — if ever — that such a roster has appeared on one stage. For true Memphis rap fans, the line-up is equivalent to Bonnaroo or Woodstock, and the timing couldn’t be better. A$AP Rocky recently sampled Wright’s 1992 song “Shoot to Kill” on the popular “OG Beeper.” Drake is storming the airwaves with homages to local rappers, riffing on Project Pat’s “Out There” for his recent hit “Look Alive,” and sampling DJ Squeeky’s 1995 track “My Head Is Spinning” on the brand-new “Nonstop.” The common denominator for Drake and A$AP Rocky’s Memphic-centric hits is 22-year old Raleigh MC BlocBoy JB, who now joins Yo Gotti, Moneybagg Yo, and Young Dolph as the latest local gangsta rapper to make the big time.

“People are reconnecting to the Memphis rap sound, but it’s never really left,” says veteran MC Al Kapone. “The way producers here made beats — particularly the rhythm of the drums, the snare rolls and the hi-hats—created an authentic Memphis sound in the 1990s. And right now, so many people are coming around to that sound. It’s the perfect time for us to unite and say that we’re all a part of creating it.”

Kingpin Skinny Pimp describes that sound as “underground and hard as hell. It’s a certain style we had, and everybody else is getting up on it now.” Meanwhile, the fast-spitting Tommy Wright III has enjoyed newfound popularity among punk rockers and skateboarders. “Not that audiences in the ’90s didn’t like to get wild, but today’s crowds can get wild without any fights,” Wright says. My audience nowadays is turnt up.”

That international fame came a few decades too late for most of these artists isn’t lost on originators like DJ Zirk, who describes the Memphis rap scene of the 1990s as “an era of just trying: What can we invent that’s different from what’s happening up north and out west? We were working on limited equipment, doing what we had to do, because we didn’t have the technology. With songs like ‘Lock’m N Da Trunk’ and Skinny’s ‘Lookin’ For Da Chewin,’ we were trying to see which one of us could be the wildest and have the most aggressive beats.”

Back then, there was nothing more aggressive than the “Triggerman” sample, a break that DJ Spanish Fly lifted off a little-known 12-inch called “Drag Rap” recorded by a New York duo known as the Showboys. They, too, will be making a rare Southern appearance at the Memphis Legends show. Thanks to Spanish Fly and DJ Squeeky, “Triggerman” showed up in dozens of Memphis underground hits. It also spawned the dance trend known as gangsta walking, which evolved into today’s jooking.

“‘Triggerman’ was so hot that we thought [the Showboys] lived in Memphis.” Wright says. “It was such a hype anthem, the one that brought the house down. The DJs around Memphis would mix it in, talk over it, create their own versions like ‘Shoot Triggerman,’ ‘Triggerman’s Back,’ ‘Triggerman’s Dead.’ It is a classic.”

Memphis Legends, with Tommy Wright III, Skinny Pimp, Gangsta Blac, Gangsta Boo, Playa Fly, La Chat, Al Kapone, DJ Squeaky, DJ Zirk, Gangsta Pat, SMK, Criminal Manne, the Showboys and more, perform at Blue Moon Event Center, 2560 Mount Moriah, on Sunday, September 2nd. $25.

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Opinion Viewpoint

No More Deals with Trump on Immigration

CREDIT: White House

As President Trump’s legal troubles intensify, his public opposition to immigration, immigrants, and refugees has hardened. The “base” — long animated by Trump’s verbal war against the immigrant community — is hanging tough with their president (a.k.a., The Unindicted Co-Conspirator). Immigrant activists and those who hope to see a broad, comprehensive overhaul of our immigration system should cease trying to negotiate with this reckless, criminal organization called the Trump administration and focus entirely on pushing political change.

White House

Stephen Miller

Since Trump first declared as presidential candidate, his supporters have claimed that they are not opposed to legal immigration, but only undocumented immigration, or in Trump parlance “illegals.”  But the administration’s attack on U.S. refugee policy, immediately following his inauguration, completely undermines this argument. Trump and his young, arrogant, neocon political advisor Stephen Miller have quietly targeted legal immigrants — suspecting, perhaps, that Americans might not notice, or care. In 2016, under the Obama administration, 1.2 million immigrants gained lawful permanent residency. The numbers for 2018 suggest that the Trump administration is on track for a 20 percent decrease in green cards granted.

The Trump administration is also proposing to limit the pathways by which people earn residency and citizenship. Under Miller’s design, if an immigrant has accepted any public benefit — such as Obamacare subsidies or social security disability benefits for a disabled child — he or she may find their chances for citizenship significantly diminished. By redefining and broadening the term “public charge,” Miller’s cruel calculus can be enacted without congressional approval.

 The pressure that the Trump administration has put on the immigrant community through enhanced enforcement and rule changes means immigrant advocates are negotiating from a position of weakness and uncertainty. Such negotiations have led to concessions on funding for Trump’s wall, elimination of the lottery visa, and even consideration of an end to family-based immigration — derisively referred to as “chain migration” by hard liners — a bedrock principle of our immigration system for decades. 

These negotiations/concessions must end immediately. If not, we will allow the dangerous dynamic duo of Trump and Miller to remake American immigration policy for generations to come. In negotiating with an administration that does not value immigration — legal or otherwise — we risk undoing more than a half century of policy that has infused our nation with a dynamic pluralism. The very idea of America and the promise the word holds for the world community is on life support, thanks to these dangerous demagogues ensconced at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Lyndon Johnson passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, one of his most lasting achievements as president. This law quadrupled the number of immigrants living in the United States from 9.6 million to 45 million. Prior to 1965, more than 75 percent of all immigrants came from Europe. Since the passage of the INA, more than half of all immigrants have their origins in Latin America and 25 percent in Asia. This law directly affected the diversification of the American population: In 1965, 84 percent of the U.S. population was of European descent; now it is approximately 62 percent. 
The co-conspirator in chief and his MAGA movement have grown as a response to these demographic shifts. But demographic shifts are not something Trump can control without a major change in immigration law. Why then should those of us who value diversity and the vision of America as a nation of immigrants negotiate from a position of perceived weakness when time is on our side and no deal under these circumstances strengthens our position?

Fear of demographic changes, fear of science, fear of truth — these are a few of the hallmarks of this angry, antediluvian administration in Washington. It’s time to tune out the noise and hatred billowing out of D.C. and prepare for the future. That future holds the promise of enlightened leadership, coupled with a resituating of the national narrative that has always focused on America as a place of hope and opportunity for the world.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.

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Plunge to Expunge at Memphis Made

The concept is fairly straightforward. You put a bunch of well-known Memphians on a hot-ass day in a place serving cold-ass beer and hire a badass comedian like Katrina Coleman to harass everybody. Then you give your event a catchy, preferably rhyming name like Plunge to Expunge and watch the money roll in!

The Plunge to Expunge at Memphis Made Brewing is a money-raising project for Just City’s Clean Slate Fund. Clean Slate does exactly what it says, creating meaningful second chances by facilitating an expungement of criminal records for low-level offenders with no more than two convictions.

Josh Spickler

“We’ve successfully reduced the costs of expungement,” Spickler says. “When [Just City] started, expungement cost $450. Now it costs $280. What that means is, when we have fund-raisers like this, we can help more people. Not quite double.”

With modest expansion, Just City has recently added capacity making it possible to complete 30 expungements in August alone. “And we have big goals for the next calendar year,” says Spickler, who thinks 200 to 250 expungements are possible.

“For a donation, you get a chance to dunk somebody, and for a big enough donation, we guarantee you get to dunk somebody,” Spickler says, describing a dunking setup where economic advantage tends to yield better access and more favorable results. “It’s much like the criminal justice system, actually,” he quips.

If enough money is raised, Holly “I Love Memphis” Whitfield, Reggie “Street Ministries” Davis, and sports radio journalist Gary Parrish will climb in the dunk tank — for justice.